I know well that in comparatively late times one school of thought in the English Church have endeavoured to get back to the old Catholic doctrine of the Sacrifice of the Mass. Some have been so dissatisfied with the formula of the Communion in the Book of Common Prayer that they have added to it and have even in some cases made use of our ancient Canon from the Latin missal. In other instances, as in the Communion Service in the American Church, a longer Canon had been adopted, taken from the First Prayer Book of 1549 and arranged differently from that of the Second Book now in use in England. But the doctrine in this is in no sense our Catholic doctrine. For, although the words "sacrifice" and "oblation" may be found in it, as indeed in the Anglican prototype, the word signifies not the Catholic sacrifice, the offering up of the Body and Blood of our Lord as a living victim upon the altar, but as the words in the Communion office define it, "our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving," in which "we offer and present ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy and living sacrifice unto thee." Mind, for my present purpose, I am not here contending that the work of the Reformers in the 16th century in thus composing a new formula was wrong. All I would insist upon is that this was in fact done; that certain ancient Catholic principles were abandoned in the New Communion Service, and that this new Book by the authority of the State was imposed upon the consciences of all. That the change thus forcibly effected was disliked very generally cannot be doubted. The new Service was ordered to come into general use in the Churches on Whitsunday, 1549, and the very next day the people of Stamford Courtenay in Devon compelled their parish priest to return to the old missal. This was but an indication of the spirit of the people and a beginning of those numerous disturbances in various parts of the country which for a time seriously alarmed the men in power. In Oxfordshire the rising was put down with a firm hand and many priests were hanged from the towers of their parish churches, as the obvious leaders of their people to resist these innovations. In Devonshire the rising took a more serious aspect and the people assembled in their thousands demanding the restoration of the Latin Mass and the abolition of the new service in English, which they described as "a Christmas game." "We will have," they said, "the Mass as of old and the Blessed Sacrament hanging in our churches"; and to show the religious character of their revolt against the State-imposition of the new form of religion, the insurgents carried the Most Holy Sacrament in a pyx in their midst, and marched with processional crosses and banners. By the aid of foreign mercenaries--German and Italian--they were defeated, and thousands, some say twenty thousand of the men who rose in defence of the Catholic doctrine of the Mass were slaughtered.